How to answer 3 big, scary annual planning questions (in days, not months)
Deep Dives
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Annual planning can feel like a herculean task. In fact, I wrote a four-part series on the topic last year; it came in at around 18,000 words. Admittedly, that probably didn’t make the process feel any less daunting.
So this year, I’m taking the opposite approach. I want to help you create a lightweight, first draft of an annual plan—especially if you’re at a smaller startup or working at an AI company where annual planning can feel like a fool’s errand given the pace of change.
You can boil most of marketing planning down to 3 questions you’ve likely already been asked for next year: What will marketing do to drive growth? How much budget does marketing need? Marketing, can you hit this revenue target?! This newsletter and our new tools will help you answer these questions.
Of course, if you want to go deeper after making your lightweight plan, you can still read the full series from last year. But if you want to plan 2025-style, you can use our vibe-coded tools to guide you. Two are totally free, and one’s for paid subscribers. Because my MKT1 2026 annual plan says: make the MKT1 paid subscription even better and more valuable.
In this newsletter:
Answers to the 3 big questions you’ll get asked during annual planning. Here’s the short version:
Question 1: What will marketing do to drive growth next year?
Answer: Plan 3–5 big bets for the year, based on your specific marketing strategy.
New: Marketing Decision Dashboard tool - for paid subs onlyQuestion 2: How much budget does marketing need?
Answer: Start with marketing efficiency metrics to ballpark the right budget range.
Bonus: Budget calculator - free toolQuestion 3: Marketing, can you hit this revenue target?
Answer: Build a bottom-up forecast to see if your top-down target is realistic
Bonus: Forecast estimator - free tool
Plus, how to take these basic planning exercises to the
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